What's your earliest memory creating artwork?
I believe I was three years old.
My earliest memory of creating artwork was on my sister's closet wall.
It was an alien landing on green crown.
My full name is Roman Zelgadas, Roman Xerxes Zelgadas.
How old were you? 33.
Have you always drawn them with those hands, or is that something you...
Always starting when, but my parents said I was amphidextrous.
The babysitters and the schoolteachers said I was amphidextrous through third grade or
something, but I don't have much memory of it.
I just remember not being on turn right or left when they said right or left.
I was like trying to think with the hand I was right with, and I'd go either way.
But then I think up through fifth and sixth grade, I stuck using my right hand.
Then by 27, I decided to see if both were as good for some strange reason.
So what do you always create with both hands now?
Most all the drawing part and the line work with the painting is done with both hands,
unless I'm in a rush.
I don't fill in the color with both hands, because it's usually a balanced situation
of staying on the canvas and how you're actually pushing a brush when you're pushing in the
color.
It's a little more difficult.
So how do you feel that working with both hands simultaneously in the drawing part
affects the creation as compared to just working with one another?
For myself, working with two hands sped up the process by at least a factor of four.
I feel like the idea is more pure.
I don't really have to think that deeply.
The thought's already there.
I'm not pondering perfection.
I'm just on the emphasis like a drag strip, just full wide open, just trying to make something
that I have a connection with at that moment.
Do you go in with any sort of plan as far as the imagery of the content or does it just
come naturally as you?
It depends on the time I have for a piece and time is kind of everything for the pieces.
If no one's around, no one's looking, it doesn't matter how long I've taken to plan it.
I can just go.
But to go with that one idea, to go with it, it's usually I have to stick to some kind
of basis, whether it be male, female, alien theme, biblical theme, something, and just
kind of go with that.
And what is a lot of the imagery that seems to pop up in your work?
I think religious experience.
Anything else?
Multidimensional access.
Do you have any specific colors that you like to use a lot or is it just very piece to piece?
What is your...
I prefer darker stuff.
I have been doing fluorescence, but I'm trying to offset it with the darker shading or the
darker colors around it, but I like the bright colors a lot.
It seems to make it look more lively.
What are some of your influences as far as other artists that are...
Growing up, I had heard of Picasso and I guess Alvedor Dolly and opened up Encyclopedia
at a very young age and said, these people were important.
Even the people that knew them ended up having their names written down.
The girls that sat for them, the girls in the famous portrait, stuff like that.
The only reason some of these names are in there is because they were painted by Picasso.
I was like, what a life to live and have other people touch by you, touch them, and then
everybody's lives were remembered, I guess as a book.
Later in life, I guess I got into HR Geiger and then now as an adult, I like Paul Laughley
off a lot.
So, is your work something that you are okay with parting with, I guess, immediately?
I actually prefer to part with immediately.
The longer I keep it, the longer I tend to like it.
The longer you tend to like it?
Like it, yeah.
It's like it grows on me.
It hangs out with me.
I was like, I wouldn't be in the mood to paint that again.
So to me, it goes up in value as it hangs out.
So what do you see your work going?
What's the next evolution?
Do you think about that or...?
I definitely would do larger pieces and have some comic stories in mind to create some
storylines for my visual art and eventually maybe animation.
I just had, you know, a really strong memory of using both hands and I was, you know, I
got to do something.
What am I going to do?
And it felt like I was hitting some speed bump.
Something was catching up with me at the same time and I took a pen and a colored pencil
and I drew two Indians with quivers of bows and buffalo and like teepees all around them
and I was just like, that was what I wanted to draw and it just came out just like I thought.
So I took a drawing and drew it away.
I just kept the thought and I tried writing with both hands and that worked really well.
I started asking other people and I thought it was very normal so I gave pins to pretty
much every way that was coming over and I was hanging out with them and I was like, can
you write your name with both hands?
I thought it was like very normal because I was like, everybody can do this or something.
But the symmetry part is pretty easy but some reason my brain can flip right or left, left
or right, I can make forwards or backwards, backwards or forwards, upside down, right
side up, simultaneously.
It doesn't have to be the same.
I don't have to write the same direction.
Both hands backwards, forwards, back and forth.
I thought that was very odd.
So it took me about two months to start sharing it with other people after I figured out it
wasn't normal.
That was at 27 and actually 33 now so I didn't actually have art shows before but I've always
been painting drawings.
So it took my art to the next level where I felt like I should be and that should be
where it's going is making my own, you know, more of my style.
Thank you.
